This will only allow for one Graphics card. I made the same mistake on my rig, starting with a HD 5870 and planning to expand, because I thought "oh, I have 2 PCIe power connectors, that would suffice for two cards". Nope, one card needs two connectors already!

Also, I would not buy that much RAM from the start. You can surely save some Korunas when you buy one slower 1 GB bar. Apart from that, it doesn't look too bad, but it will probably take 6-12 months to pay it off completely. Although if you only plan on recuperating the cost of the GPU (that's the 200 USD, I guess) it will be quicker.

This will only allow for one Graphics card. I made the same mistake on my rig, starting with a HD 5870 and planning to expand, because I thought "oh, I have 2 PCIe power connectors, that would suffice for two cards". Nope, one card needs two connectors already!

Also, I would not buy that much RAM from the start. You can surely save some Korunas when you buy one slower 1 GB bar. Apart from that, it doesn't look too bad, but it will probably take 6-12 months to pay it off completely. Although if you only plan on recuperating the cost of the GPU (that's the 200 USD, I guess) it will be quicker.

Thanks for the feedback. I am still trying to get my head around all the mining info. I posted my first comment after doing a lot of reading and researching. Then, this morning, I did some more reading and turned some of my conclusions on their heads. Ugh. Actually, the 200USD refers to the CPU, Mobo and RAM. I wanted them to be low cost and energy efficient for mining. Don't we all? The GPU can be a toy for later if I stop mining. Even though, I am just dabbling right now, I also want the GPU to be the best bang for my buck in case I decide to take it further.

To reply to both you and Being, yes, I am hoping to recuperate my costs after about a year. I would love to find a way to do it sooner.

It's been hard finding the sweet spot of high Mhash/s/W with a reasonable investment amount. There are so many variables. I think I find a GPU I like, then other hardware is more expensive or unavailable. And why don't most people write their results in Mhash/s/W? Who really cares if they are getting 2Ghash/s if its costing them 1Mwatt in electricity?

When you peeps overclock, how do you see if the card is hitting the limit? I am using Win7 32bit with AOCLBF, monitoring load/temps with Afterburner, OC'ing with Trixx. Should I keep an eye on the GPU load graphs/AOCLBF for restarts? Or will the cards simply hang/reboot the system? (even if it's a multi-gpu setup, and I'm OC'ing one of the cards not hooked up to the monitor?)Sorry if these questions are noobish, just trying to get the most out of my 5850's and 5870 on stock voltage.

Yes but for how long? I can push my saph vapor x 5870 to 975 for a while, but then drop out... I run them at 950/300 get a constant 423-425 Mh out of them

That doesn't seem too unrealistic. For non reference that's definitely pushing the limit though. I believe the record for a reference is like 502 but that wasn't held for a long period of time. I'm sure you can easily get 460 stable in some cases when you use a reference card.